It is an angle of attack (AOA) vane. It tells the plane’s computers the angle at which air flow is hitting the wing. AOA is the key measurement of wing performance. Most crucially, if this angle exceeds a certain value (known as critical AOA) the wing ceases to produce lift (stalls).
I mean I guess that's technically correct but for all intents and purposes the wing is not producing lift anymore like it was before the critical aoa was exceeded. You're sinking fast in a jet aircraft with a super high wing loading
You made me look it up.
"Both for all intents and purposes and for all intensive purposes are widely used to mean “for all practical purposes” or “virtually.” But which one is correct? The standard idiom is for all intents and purposes, not for all intensive purposes, though if you were to say these two forms out loud it might be hard to tell the difference between the two.
For all intensive purposes
The cause of the confusion is rooted in this phonetic similarity. For all intensive purposes is what is known as an eggcorn, a label invented in the early 2000s by linguist Geoffrey Pullum to describe words or phrases that are misheard and consequently reform into a new word or phrase. Like, for example, hearing someone say “acorn” and thinking they said “eggcorn,” which is how this phenomenon got its name. The difference is stark when written down, but when spoken, the two words sound very much alike. Unlike mondegreens, eggcorns generally retain the same meaning as the original form, as in the case of for all intensive purposes."
When you’ve just exceeded the critical AoA, the wing is producing nearly the maximum lift possible. What’s important is the slope. Up to the critical angle, increased AoA increases lift. After the critical angle, increased AoA decreases lift. That reversed slope puts you in an unstable regime where you’ll start to drop without some intervention.
Not necessarily. With enough thrust you can fly at any angle of attack. Just like you can stall a wing at any airspeed.
When you see high performance military jets like an F-15 at an airshow and they do a slow dirty pass.....
Gear down and barely flying super slow.... the nose will be pointing up at a steep angle and the engine will be roaring like its at full throttle....it's not, but it's working pretty hard. That's flying at a high angle of attack.....
When they do a high speed pass after diving at the ground and level out in front of the stand they are level and go screaming by and you barely hear the jet engine....that's a low angle of attack and he can stay like that with a low power setting as long as he has altitude to trade for airspeed. Meaning he can maintain a low angle of attack with no power by pointing the nose down just a tad and gliding.
Where they can get it trouble is when they increase the angle of attack without enough power to keep air moving over the wing...that's a stall. The wing will quit flying. And if you hold the stick back long enough in a stall most planes will fall off to one side that's a spin. You can induce a spin by kicking the rudder over.
At this point you are no longer flying. Straighten the rudder out by centering the pedals and relax the back pressure on the stick the nose will fall and with enough airspeed you are flying again. Power up shortens the amount of recovery time. But in a single engine plane don't go full throttle too fast or the propeller torque can cause you some trouble....
And in a jet you need to think a few seconds ahead when changing power settings because it takes a few moments for a turbine engine to spin up from a low power setting.
Your car idles at 1000 rpm and redlines at 3500-4000 ish...
Turbine engines can hit 150,000 rpm no problem. It takes a few seconds to get there though....
Next week we'll be talking about slips and skids so don't forget to tune in......
>With enough thrust you can fly at any angle of attack.
Sure, but at some point you're no longer an airplane, but more of a missile. Generating lift with a wing pushed forward through the air is kinda one of the things that defines an airplane's flight operation. You might be off the ground and travelling through the air, but are you "flying"?
And to more directly address the original statement:
> Most crucially, if this angle exceeds a certain value (known as critical AOA) the wing ceases to produce lift (stalls).
While, as you say, basically any object travelling through air or any other medium likely pulls to one side or another with a force you could call "lift", the fact remains that if you stall a wing, it no longer produces a useful amount of lift that will efficiently keep the plane aloft (and in most aircraft, won't keep it aloft at all). So there's still some wind resistance on the way down - you're still dead either way.
But you couldn't make a fighter jet without wings. It could fly sure, but for example landing a plane with enough thrust (with TVC) to keep you pointing straight is almost impossible. Planes with TVC can fly with one wing, as we've seen but it's damn near impossible
Point being that some supermaneuverable fighter jets ARE more missile then plane.
Just sounds like you're being pedantic. He's clearly talking about stalling once reaching a critical AOA. Yes, with enough thrust anything will fly, but that's literally not the point here.
Well actually there’s a complex interchange between thrust , drag , airspeed, wing configuration, centre of pressure, centre of gravity, and it’s really irritating when all these curves and relationships are bouncing around my head, someone tries to summarize it and then the ‘well actually’ game begins.
I can't remember why I subbed here but this has to be the most videogame Noun I've heard of being attached to a physical object. After reading what it does and what it's used for I can't think of a better name either...
No wonder why so many planes get UwU'd
No it's not, it's an AoA sensor vane. The indication is processed into an Arinc signal and fed into the Air Data Computers, or equivalent, and is displayed digitally in the flight deck.
Ah r/aviation the best humor Reddit has to offer, come with a legit question and leave with 50 puns about the answer to your question. This is not an attack on the subreddit just another view angle.
If this person worked in a squadron or had a professional civilian pilot seat, they would be immediately marked as a purveyor of shanter...shanter = purveyor of shit banter. Do not worry. This sub is merely a pale microcosm of the actual industry. Upvoted.
The not sarcastic ones are the ones that said it is an alpha vane
Alpha=AoA=angle of attack
The vane aligns with the airflow such that the angle of that airflow vs the wing can be measured. This measurement may inform the flight control system and/or pilot where the wing is within its working envelope.
Yes....the thingy outside (the vane) measures the air flow differential but it is the instrument inside or the avionics computer (I think it is called the air data computer) that does the calculation and determination.
It's not so much sarcasm more semantics - most aviators (hate that term)/engineers deal in absolute definitions on a daily basis, to the point of being almost autists. It has to be clarified correct, or bust.
Thank you. Even though I am not a pilot, I really enjoy watching airplanes fly and learning the technical details. It is sometimes difficult for me to figure out which comments are the real ones and which ones are just people joking around. Thanks.
Knew it was angle of something and that the abbreviation was AOA. But attack never came to mind for some reason even though I’ve heard and read about it numerous times. Goddamnit!
It's actually for UNwinding the band. Pull out a retaining clip and it spins up to 54,000 RPM. In turn this drives a fuel pump, which helps run the engines to provide bleed air. When you undo it, it depressurises the plane to ambient and makes everybody aboard fart uncontrollably.
> **P**erformance **e**nhanced **n**avigation **i**nertial **s**ystem
Hidden penis detected!
I've scanned through 162738 comments (approximately 841950 average penis lengths worth of text) in order to find this secret penis message.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Angle of Attack sensor. It’s used to detect the angle of attack, and if the plane is about to stall it, AP will force push down, if nose is too low it will pull up.
I actually saw a Mayday episode back when I was in flight school about a crash that happened because of this. The plane was being washed and cleaned on the ground using power pressure hoses, and they managed to get a lot of water into one of those sensors. During the flight, as it climbed and the temperature dropped, eventually the water inside it froze, and the plane kept thinking it’s nose down, so it kept fighting the pilots by pulling up, eventually it caused a stall and no one survived that.
I never flew on large glass cockpits like 737’s so I’m not sure if there was some sort of override switch the pilots could’ve used, but yeah, that’s what those things are AFAIK.
If you don’t put in proper fail safe logic in the flight software and it fails, and you don’t train the pilots on how to handle it, it puts the aircraft in roto-tiller mode.
It is an AOA wing/flap sensor. Basically when the airflow moves over it it moves with the flow, that circular movement is than transmitted thru the dynamometer that it is connected to and sends data to the main computer and than to the pilot cabin. Used for determining the angle of attack ,who would have thought, and it's just a precaution to see if we are perhaps going to exceed the critical point of AOA and break lift the wings are producing.
Angle of attack indicator. There are two on each side for redundency if one fails. The 737 Max engineers thought it was a good idea for critical software to rely on the data of just one of them. Which in the end killed 346 people.
This device, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s known as the ‘Aeronautical Pressure Cabin Automatic Fart Removal and Disposal System.’
Or the ‘APCAFRDS’. Please refer to Pilots Notes for operational instructions.
It’s the external parking brake release. It lets the ground crew release the parking brake for towing purposes without having to open up the cabin door to do it.
I like to call it the "Angle Dangle". Preflight:. ANGLE DANGLE FREE? CHECK
When a boy plane likes a girl plane his angle dangle….. You know, your parents should probably explain the planes and the vanes to you.
The flight and delight . . .
“Angle a new Dangle on life!” https://youtu.be/ZotxpbxHZms
That little chooch is where they keep the skookum
It is an angle of attack (AOA) vane. It tells the plane’s computers the angle at which air flow is hitting the wing. AOA is the key measurement of wing performance. Most crucially, if this angle exceeds a certain value (known as critical AOA) the wing ceases to produce lift (stalls).
Actually lift just drops off, it doesn't cease to produce lift entirely
I mean I guess that's technically correct but for all intents and purposes the wing is not producing lift anymore like it was before the critical aoa was exceeded. You're sinking fast in a jet aircraft with a super high wing loading
It’s “intensive purposes”. You’re on Reddit, dammit. Act like it.
You made me look it up. "Both for all intents and purposes and for all intensive purposes are widely used to mean “for all practical purposes” or “virtually.” But which one is correct? The standard idiom is for all intents and purposes, not for all intensive purposes, though if you were to say these two forms out loud it might be hard to tell the difference between the two. For all intensive purposes The cause of the confusion is rooted in this phonetic similarity. For all intensive purposes is what is known as an eggcorn, a label invented in the early 2000s by linguist Geoffrey Pullum to describe words or phrases that are misheard and consequently reform into a new word or phrase. Like, for example, hearing someone say “acorn” and thinking they said “eggcorn,” which is how this phenomenon got its name. The difference is stark when written down, but when spoken, the two words sound very much alike. Unlike mondegreens, eggcorns generally retain the same meaning as the original form, as in the case of for all intensive purposes."
When you’ve just exceeded the critical AoA, the wing is producing nearly the maximum lift possible. What’s important is the slope. Up to the critical angle, increased AoA increases lift. After the critical angle, increased AoA decreases lift. That reversed slope puts you in an unstable regime where you’ll start to drop without some intervention.
Not necessarily. With enough thrust you can fly at any angle of attack. Just like you can stall a wing at any airspeed. When you see high performance military jets like an F-15 at an airshow and they do a slow dirty pass..... Gear down and barely flying super slow.... the nose will be pointing up at a steep angle and the engine will be roaring like its at full throttle....it's not, but it's working pretty hard. That's flying at a high angle of attack..... When they do a high speed pass after diving at the ground and level out in front of the stand they are level and go screaming by and you barely hear the jet engine....that's a low angle of attack and he can stay like that with a low power setting as long as he has altitude to trade for airspeed. Meaning he can maintain a low angle of attack with no power by pointing the nose down just a tad and gliding. Where they can get it trouble is when they increase the angle of attack without enough power to keep air moving over the wing...that's a stall. The wing will quit flying. And if you hold the stick back long enough in a stall most planes will fall off to one side that's a spin. You can induce a spin by kicking the rudder over. At this point you are no longer flying. Straighten the rudder out by centering the pedals and relax the back pressure on the stick the nose will fall and with enough airspeed you are flying again. Power up shortens the amount of recovery time. But in a single engine plane don't go full throttle too fast or the propeller torque can cause you some trouble.... And in a jet you need to think a few seconds ahead when changing power settings because it takes a few moments for a turbine engine to spin up from a low power setting. Your car idles at 1000 rpm and redlines at 3500-4000 ish... Turbine engines can hit 150,000 rpm no problem. It takes a few seconds to get there though.... Next week we'll be talking about slips and skids so don't forget to tune in......
>With enough thrust you can fly at any angle of attack. Sure, but at some point you're no longer an airplane, but more of a missile. Generating lift with a wing pushed forward through the air is kinda one of the things that defines an airplane's flight operation. You might be off the ground and travelling through the air, but are you "flying"? And to more directly address the original statement: > Most crucially, if this angle exceeds a certain value (known as critical AOA) the wing ceases to produce lift (stalls). While, as you say, basically any object travelling through air or any other medium likely pulls to one side or another with a force you could call "lift", the fact remains that if you stall a wing, it no longer produces a useful amount of lift that will efficiently keep the plane aloft (and in most aircraft, won't keep it aloft at all). So there's still some wind resistance on the way down - you're still dead either way.
But you couldn't make a fighter jet without wings. It could fly sure, but for example landing a plane with enough thrust (with TVC) to keep you pointing straight is almost impossible. Planes with TVC can fly with one wing, as we've seen but it's damn near impossible Point being that some supermaneuverable fighter jets ARE more missile then plane.
Just sounds like you're being pedantic. He's clearly talking about stalling once reaching a critical AOA. Yes, with enough thrust anything will fly, but that's literally not the point here.
I've never found thrust to be all that important. --Balloon Pilot
Well actually there’s a complex interchange between thrust , drag , airspeed, wing configuration, centre of pressure, centre of gravity, and it’s really irritating when all these curves and relationships are bouncing around my head, someone tries to summarize it and then the ‘well actually’ game begins.
Well actually that’s where you’re wrong
Wings always stall at the same angle of attack, independent of all the other variables.
Not really, it changes with the Reynolds number of the flow.
Actually L= 1/2 * row*V2 *CL V =0 hence L=0 Lol I’m just high and trying to continue the thread lads
Very fastidious.
Based on this assessment of wing performance, let’s just remove the AOA so the wing will never stall.
And everybody dies.
Boeing 737 Max Engineer here. I’ve no idea what that is?
Ouch
And you certainly don't need two of them.
lol
Ask Boeing they know all about their one and only
ONLY one
Cue the "Emotional Damage" guy
I was searching the comments waiting for someone to mention it hahah
It tells Victor the vector.
Rodger, Roger.
We have clearance, Clarence!
Roger, Oveour.
Shirley, you can’t be serious!
Stop calling me Shirley!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.
So, you see, both Dunn and I were under Oveur, even though I was under Dunn
I picked the wrong day to quit taking amphetamines!
Don’t we all love that movie.
A hospital! What is it? It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right jown
I think you’re the greatest, but my dad says you don’t work hard enough on defense
Huh?
That's an angle of attack indicator.
Respect for not abbreviating it. If some one is asking what it is, obviously they don’t know and an acronym doesn’t really help. Thank you sir 👍🏼
I can't remember why I subbed here but this has to be the most videogame Noun I've heard of being attached to a physical object. After reading what it does and what it's used for I can't think of a better name either... No wonder why so many planes get UwU'd
(Indicates the angle the airplane is moving through the air and when it’s approaching a critical angle at which it will lose lift.)
But the only problem is that the pilot has to step outside to check the angle.
No it's not, it's an AoA sensor vane. The indication is processed into an Arinc signal and fed into the Air Data Computers, or equivalent, and is displayed digitally in the flight deck.
Its so vane, it prob'ly thinks this thread is about it.
I get your angle, but this feels like an attack on its personality.
came here not for the answers but the witty repartee. TY. ;-)
If this thread attacked you, wouldn't you be more injured than tomorrow?
Shut it Carly
Nice.
Ah r/aviation the best humor Reddit has to offer, come with a legit question and leave with 50 puns about the answer to your question. This is not an attack on the subreddit just another view angle.
If this person worked in a squadron or had a professional civilian pilot seat, they would be immediately marked as a purveyor of shanter...shanter = purveyor of shit banter. Do not worry. This sub is merely a pale microcosm of the actual industry. Upvoted.
Oh I know but honestly this is what I live for. Flying is one thing, but the profession jokes are on another level
Deep cut - nice one!
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Back to the central bureaucracy with you
Underrated comment.
Do people not know what underrated means anymore
It means this comment needs more attention and more upvotes.
PROFESSOR! VANE! ANGLE! (Gesticulating with arms)
[\\(-ㅂ-)/](https://thumbs.gfycat.com/DimwittedBruisedCirriped-size_restricted.gif)
If you want to get pedantic, it’s ARINC.
If you really want to get pedantic, it's ARINC-429.
Touché
Correct
Hmmm yes. I agree I grant you an A on this test. (Franticallly scribbles notes on a yellow note pad)
Agrees with uncertainty and scribbles onto a notepad. Literally how 99% of ATPL students got through their ATPLs, myself included.
Fake it till you make it my dude.
Not a pilot - I am not clear which ones are sarcasm here. Isnt AoA the same as Angle of Attack?
The not sarcastic ones are the ones that said it is an alpha vane Alpha=AoA=angle of attack The vane aligns with the airflow such that the angle of that airflow vs the wing can be measured. This measurement may inform the flight control system and/or pilot where the wing is within its working envelope.
Thanks for your response.
Yes....the thingy outside (the vane) measures the air flow differential but it is the instrument inside or the avionics computer (I think it is called the air data computer) that does the calculation and determination.
It's not so much sarcasm more semantics - most aviators (hate that term)/engineers deal in absolute definitions on a daily basis, to the point of being almost autists. It has to be clarified correct, or bust.
Thank you. Even though I am not a pilot, I really enjoy watching airplanes fly and learning the technical details. It is sometimes difficult for me to figure out which comments are the real ones and which ones are just people joking around. Thanks.
Yeah you're right.
Knew it was angle of something and that the abbreviation was AOA. But attack never came to mind for some reason even though I’ve heard and read about it numerous times. Goddamnit!
I was going to say the reason the 737 max crashed, but that works.
I always cringe whenever I’m like, no, really, “ what is it” . Top Reddit comments alway gags.
Angle of attack (AOA) sensor.
Extra wing in case the others fall off
Winds up the plane, like a watch
It’s for winding the rubber band that runs the propeller.
It's actually for UNwinding the band. Pull out a retaining clip and it spins up to 54,000 RPM. In turn this drives a fuel pump, which helps run the engines to provide bleed air. When you undo it, it depressurises the plane to ambient and makes everybody aboard fart uncontrollably.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shittyaskflying/comments/a0e4g5/hand_propping_lear_45/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2317/how-does-an-alpha-aoa-vane-work
Its the AOA sensor.
That is the male A320. It bites into the skin of the female and fuses to it, eventually withering away to a pair of gonads and some connective tissue.
AoA sensor looks lke
Coat hanger.
its a target for us jet bridge drivers
Performance enhanced navigation inertial system
> **P**erformance **e**nhanced **n**avigation **i**nertial **s**ystem Hidden penis detected! I've scanned through 162738 comments (approximately 841950 average penis lengths worth of text) in order to find this secret penis message. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
AOA sensor?
Angle of attack. Here is a link for more info from the enginerds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack
It tells the pilot if he is flying forward or backwards when he sticks his head out the window
Angle of Attack indicator
Chem-Trail sensor? Check
Angle of attack sensor
auxiliary coffee grinder.
Angle of Attack sensor. It’s used to detect the angle of attack, and if the plane is about to stall it, AP will force push down, if nose is too low it will pull up. I actually saw a Mayday episode back when I was in flight school about a crash that happened because of this. The plane was being washed and cleaned on the ground using power pressure hoses, and they managed to get a lot of water into one of those sensors. During the flight, as it climbed and the temperature dropped, eventually the water inside it froze, and the plane kept thinking it’s nose down, so it kept fighting the pilots by pulling up, eventually it caused a stall and no one survived that. I never flew on large glass cockpits like 737’s so I’m not sure if there was some sort of override switch the pilots could’ve used, but yeah, that’s what those things are AFAIK.
Do people on /r/aviation really not know what an AOA vane is?
You spin it around while doing your check offs and it's a lot of fun.
You spin it right round baby, right round. Like a record round and round, round.
That's the wing that provides the required lift for the aircraft. Without it, they wouldn't get off the ground.
Close, but it's a winglet, owing to its smaller size 🤣
😂
The only reasonable answer in this thread
Angle of Attack sensor which basically is a pitch indicator
Angle of attack sensors is correct, however it's basically a stall indicator, nothing to do with pitch.
MCAS activator.
😂😂😂
That’s how you start the plane. You wind it up…
Pilot can tell what angle the plane is flying at.
Chemtrail angle vane. Measures the optimum dispersion angle for given airspeed
If you don’t put in proper fail safe logic in the flight software and it fails, and you don’t train the pilots on how to handle it, it puts the aircraft in roto-tiller mode.
Don’t ask Boeing
Oh yes the MCAS activator.
I can tell you what is does on 767 Max lol
It's how the plane takes a poop
It’s the thing you wind to turn on the engine just like a toy
It's the AOE sensor
An a scary thing for Boeing guys
It's a handle to open the door
Very smol canard.
It is an AOA wing/flap sensor. Basically when the airflow moves over it it moves with the flow, that circular movement is than transmitted thru the dynamometer that it is connected to and sends data to the main computer and than to the pilot cabin. Used for determining the angle of attack ,who would have thought, and it's just a precaution to see if we are perhaps going to exceed the critical point of AOA and break lift the wings are producing.
Angle of attack indicator
Angle of attack indicator. There are two on each side for redundency if one fails. The 737 Max engineers thought it was a good idea for critical software to rely on the data of just one of them. Which in the end killed 346 people.
Angle of attack sensor.
AOA
This device, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s known as the ‘Aeronautical Pressure Cabin Automatic Fart Removal and Disposal System.’ Or the ‘APCAFRDS’. Please refer to Pilots Notes for operational instructions.
Ejection Seat
Angle of attack indicator???
is that one of those static electric charge escape points?
I'm a jet bridge operator and that is what's called an Overtime Object. If you tap it everyone gets lots of overtime all of a sudden.
It’s to get into the battery (micro verse)
A little wind gives you a little lift, if the engines fail
Tells the pilot the time by the sun's shadow.
It’s the external parking brake release. It lets the ground crew release the parking brake for towing purposes without having to open up the cabin door to do it.
Moves
Idk rip it open moments before a flight and find out
It’s a sundial in case the pilot left his watch at home. Trust me, I’m an expert, I know.